Fruit and vegetable harvest often involves placing harvested products into a container, which can be four feet wide and long by four feet high in size. The containers are transported within the field, orchard or farm to a location where they are collocated with other containers and staged for shipping. The containers are loaded onto a truck, trailer, wagon or other transport vehicle for transportation to a storage or processing facility.
The tracking of material using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in a warehouse is becoming a mature art. For example, in a warehouse, trucks are typically parked at loading docks and containers are moved into warehouses with a forklift. An RFID portal at the door between the loading dock and warehouse can assume the first time an ID is read at the portal, the container is moving from the truck into storage. The next time it is read, it can be assumed the container is moving from storage onto a truck.
In a field or orchard environment, there are no boundaries that are permanently established to control the flow of goods. Without walls to limit container and transport vehicle movement assumptions about the flow of goods that are detected, such as these made about goods warehouse are not valid.
What is needed in the art is a simple cost effective way of gathering information about agricultural products prior to or shortly after leaving the field.